fprintf one data per cell from text to csv

Hi all, I've written the following code to help me copy the third column from multiple text files to one csv spreadsheet in the following format: header is 'Trails', followed by third column of each text file displayed horizontally per row (thus no \n).

fidO = fopen('pvtsort.csv','wt');
d = dir('*txt'); 
for i = 1:length(d)
  fid = fopen(d(i).name, 'r');  % open all input txt files, no array
  values = textscan(fid,'%*s%*s%s','HeaderLines',4, 'Delimiter','\t');% read only the 3rd column
  fprintf(fidO,'%s\t','Trails');
  for j = 1:length(values{1,1})
    pvt = values{1,1}
    fprintf(fidO,'%s\t',pvt{j});   %note "the curlies" to dereference cellstr to char
  end
  fprintf(fidO,'\r\n')
  fid = fclose(fid);
end
fidO = fclose(fidO)

Well the output looks fine when I open the csv in matlab, with one data point occupying one cell, one column of data per row with header "Trails" in front. However, when I open my output spreadsheet 'pvtsort.csv' directly outside matlab, it looks funny. All the data points from one column are crammed into a cell instead of separate cells like how the csv was displayed in matlab (as if the '\t' didn't work). I played around with several delimiters like \v, \r,combinations of these with '\t', but could not for the life of me figure out why data wasn't displayed properly when opening csv outside matlab. Pointers appreciated.

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

Just guessing here since I don’t have your files and so can’t run your code, but since .csv indicates comma-separated variables, perhaps:

fprintf(fidO,'%s, ','Trails');

and

fprintf(fidO,'%s, ',pvt{j});   %note "the curlies" to dereference cellstr to char

could work.

[Tammy Chen]

Thank you so much for the prompt answer. You suggestion regarding file format is a good point. I didn't try switching the delimiter to comma (because I want my output file to use the same delimiter as my input text files, which use '\t'), but simply switched the output file format to xls and viola, it displayed in the format I wanted. So this is what I have now:

fidO = fopen('pvtsort.xls','w+');
d = dir('*txt'); 
for i = 1:length(d)
  fid = fopen(d(i).name, 'r');  % open all input txt files, no array
  values = textscan(fid,'%*s%*s%s','HeaderLines',4, 'Delimiter','\t');% read only the 3rd column
  for n = 1
  m = num2str(n * i)
  fprintf(fidO,'%s%s\t','Trail',m);
  end
  for j = 1:length(values{1,1})
    pvt = values{1,1}
    fprintf(fidO,'%s\t',pvt{j});   %note "the curlies" to dereference cellstr to char
  end
  fprintf(fidO,'\n')
  fid = fclose(fid);
end
fidO = fclose(fidO)

Not the final output yet because I still want Matlab to do some percentile calculations for me, but hope this helps someone out there.

[Star Strider]

My pleasure.

I apologise for the delay in replying, but was locked out by some sort of ‘Scheduled Maintenance’ for the last few hours.